Students at Atlanta University, circa 1900s. As seen in Stanley Nelson’s TELL THEM WE ARE RISING: THE STORY OF BLACK COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES debuting on PBS. Photo courtesy Atlanta University Center.

As Black History Month draws to a close, what better day than Presidents’ Day 2018 to shine a light on African-Americans who’ve defied cultural, economic, sexist and, most especially, racist roadblocks in pursuit of higher education.

Tonight, Monday, February 19, 2018, HBO and PBS roll out three thought-provoking documentaries that examine the vagaries of higher education in the African-American community. I urge you to catch the films tonight beginning at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT, on HBO, and ending at 11:59 p.m. ET, on PBS (or during repeat screenings, on affiliate portals and DVD/Blu-ray, or via streaming as indicated individually below).

Brief vignettes capture the vibrant 26-year-old in her Austin, Texas, classroom enthusiastically sparring with her young math students (“I want them to think for themselves!”) and, off the clock, during her modern dance classes and while pursuing her other creative endeavors (singing and modeling). She’s a charmer who relishes the fact that she’s the first in her single parent family to graduate from college, earn a Masters’ Degree and buy her own home. She hopes to go on for her Doctorate; but sadly, the hard-won education credentials and modeling photos that once gave her a positive presence on the Web are now overshadowed by her mug shot.

Ms. King was pulled over for speeding on June 15, 2015. Footage from her encounter with white police officer Bryan Richter was recorded on his dashcam and plays out in this film. As her pleas for a simple traffic ticket are ignored and her horrifying physical abuse at the hands of Officer Richter unfolds, you may, as I did, be unable to stifle your own vocal outcry. The 100-pound, highly educated young teacher was brutally thrown to the pavement and hogtied by the over-sized white, male cop.

Currently nominated for an Academy Award® in the Best Documentary Short Subject category, Traffic Stop vividly documents the shameful, ongoing legacy of racism and, also in Ms. King’s case, sexism that African-Americans continue to face. The opportunities and respect due this dedicated, articulate educator, so proud of her higher education credentials and artistic talent, were nullified in an instant by a racist cop who couldn’t see past the color of her skin.

Traffic Stop debuts on HBO tonight, Monday, February 19, 2018, 8:00 – 8:35 p.m. ET/PT. (Check listings for additional HBO play dates in the weeks ahead, as well as the film’s current availability on HBO NOW, HBO GO, HBO On Demand and affiliate portals.)

A Spelman College class, circa 1898. From TELL THEM WE ARE RISING: THE STORY OF BLACK COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES. Photo courtesy Spelman College.

In counterpoint to Traffic Stop,the feature-length documentary Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities traces the history of racial empowerment through education.

“For generations, there was no other place our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents could go to school,” recalls the film’s Emmy® and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson. “I set out to tell a story of Americans who refused to be denied a higher education and–in their resistance–created a set of institutions that would influence and shape the landscape of the country for centuries to come.”

In Tell Them We Are Rising, filmmaker Stanley Nelson (A Place of OurOwn, Freedom Summer, The Murder of Emmett Till ) traces the impact of education, or lack of it, on the lives of African-Americans, from slavery through post-Civil and WWI and WWII America. Strong focus is on the roots and evolution of black colleges and universities as seedbeds for Civil Rights activism. Striking vintage photos and film footage and reflections from period letters (unfortunately undated), newspaper clippings and articulate historians and elderly college graduates are assets.

A group of freed slaves with books, from TELL THEM WE ARE RISING: THE STORY OF BLACK COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES. Photo courtesy Cook Collection/The Valentine.

In addition to the broadcast, the film serves as the second film in Stanley Nelson’s “America Revisited” trilogy and the centerpiece of the yearlong multi-platform HBCU Rising projectthat explores the legacy of “America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities” (HBCUs) and features national partnerships, exclusive events, StoryCorps audio stories, video shorts, a HBCU campus tour and HBCU Digital Yearbook. For more info, check out http://HBCURising.com

Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities premieres tonight, Monday, February 19, 2018, on the PBS series Independent Lens,9:00 – 10:30 p.m. ET. (Check local listings for premiere and repeat screenings in your region and its availability on DVD/Blu-Ray. Online streaming begins on Tuesday, February 20, 2018, at http://www.pbs.org/independent lens/

Chicago teenager Robert Henderson’s determination to graduate from high school and college despite the roadblocks that threaten to derail him is a journey worth sharing in ALL THE DIFFERENCE. Photo courtesy Tod Lending.

“It isn’t how you start, it’s how you finish,” says Robert Henderson, one of two African-American teenage boys whose hard-won journey from the South Side of Chicago through high school graduation and four years of college drive the five-year timeline in All the Difference. All the Difference originally debuted on the PBS series POV in September 2016.

A horse-drawn cart packed with dynamite exploded at the start of noontime lunch hour in front of the Morgan Bank on Wall Street, NYC, on September 16, 1920. From AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: THE BOMBING OF WALL STREET. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The parallels are unsettling. Immigrant profiling and deportation. American workers embittered by a profiteering moneyed class. Homegrown terrorists schooled in bomb-making and rhetoric by foreign-born anarchists. Russia vs. the F.B.I.

As revisited in the fascinating new documentary, The Bombing of Wall Street, debuting on the PBS series American Experience tonight, Tuesday, February 13, 2018, 9:00-10:00 p.m. ET (online February 14 @ www.pbs.org ), it’s clear that the “hot topics” currently inciting angry debate and stalemate in D.C. are hardly new. In the years following World War I, wealthy American capitalists grew their coffers on the backs of those who fought and returned home from The Great War in Europe only to face grueling conditions and low wages in factories and coal mines.

Anarchists (reportedly in dark hats) gathered in Union Square, New York City, May 1, 1914. Note Baker and Taylor Company Booksellers in the background. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The outcome of the Bolshevik Revolution (November 1917) in Russia inspired workers of the world to challenge capitalism, unite and strike. Some took more violent means to get their message across.

In April and May of 1919, 30 bombs targeting U.S. bankers and government officials were mailed to arrive on May Day. Attorney General and Presidential hopeful A. Mitchell Palmer ordered the Bureau of Investigation to draw up a list of possible suspects. Shortly thereafter, a bomb was delivered and exploded prematurely on Palmer’s front doorstep, scattering the bomb and the bomber’s remains hither and yon and generating fear for Palmer’s future well-being. Similar attacks occurred in six other cities.

J. Edgar Hoover. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Palmer retaliated by targeting anyone purportedly connected to revolutionary groups. He created “The Radical Division” of the Bureau and appointed a 24-year-old lawyer to manage it. Thus began the rise of J. Edgar Hoover, whose affinity for files had been fine-tuned during an early stint at the Library of Congress.

With Hoover on board at the Bureau, more than 200,000 files on radical activities were swiftly compiled and, on the second anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution (November 7, 1919), Palmer ordered a raid that led to the deportation of 249 Russian immigrants, a group that included anarchist Emma Goldman. More “Palmer Raids” were staged nationwide and suspected radicals were locked up en masse in deplorable makeshift detention centers. Many detainees were innocent, law-abiding hyphenate-American citizens.

The culmination of this tragic period in U.S. history came on September 16, 1920, when a horse-drawn cart packed with dynamite exploded on Wall Street during lunch hour in front of the Morgan Bank–the world’s most powerful, family run banking institution. Thirty-eight innocent Wall Street employees and passersby were killed and hundreds more were injured. The bombs during that period were not unsophisticated: They ejected deadly shrapnel that shattered human organs. Other financial institutions across the country rightfully feared similar retaliation.

A blown out car and dead horse are collateral damage as the police hold back curious post-bombing crowds in lower Manhattan, on September 16, 1920. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

“During this period, America was grappling with some of the same difficult quandaries in which we find ourselves now,” said PBS American Experience Executive Producer Mark Samels.”How do we protect ourselves from violent extremists who wish to harm us without violating the civil liberties of those who may have different political beliefs? There was no easy answer in 1920 and no easy answer now.”

Writer/director Susan Bellows managed to acquire and weave a remarkable collection of period film footage throughout her 52-minute documentary. The century-old footage is riveting as it captures and contrasts life on Wall Street before and after the September 16, 1920 bombing and documents the nationwide workers’ strikes and immigrant raids, roundups and deportations that preceded the bombing. The scope of the terrorist threats on American soil and the challenges to capitalism, immigration and the U.S. Constitution almost 100 years ago are eye-opening and chilling in light of similar debilitating challenges facing our country today.

The September 16, 1920 Wall Street “bomb wagon” as reconstructed from recovered fragments. No suspected perpetrators were ever tried and convicted. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The Bombing of Wall Street, based in part on Beverly Gage’s The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in its First Age of Terror (Oxford University Press, Inc., 2009), should serve as timely re-education and a wake-up call for all Americans. It’s a must-see for those who need “reminding” in the highest echelons of all three branches of the U.S. government.

The Bombing of Wall Street debuts on the PBS series American Experience tonight, Tuesday, February 13, 2018, at 9:00 – 10:00 p.m. ET. Check local listings for air times and repeat broadcasts in your region, its availability on DVD and http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/ for online viewing beginning on February 14, 2018.–Judith Trojan

Just a quick heads-up…encouraging my FrontRowCenter readers living in the New York metropolitan area to attend a highly anticipated screening and Q&A at Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, in New York City tonight, Tuesday, January 23, 2018.

The landmark documentary, A Time for Burning–filmed in 1965 by my friend, mega-Award-winning documentarian, Bill Jersey–will be screened beginning at 6:20 p.m., followed by a Q&A with Bill.

Now 91 and still thriving as a filmmaker and painter in the bucolic Delaware River town of Lambertville, NJ, Bill has been the focus of several of my filmmaker interviews and FrontRowCenter profiles in the past.

If you are at all interested in learning about the roots of the cinema vérité movement and revisiting the then incendiary 1965 Civil Rights’ film, A Time for Burning, with one of the movement’s masters, do yourself a favor and head over to the Film Forum.

Bill Jersey shared the back story of A Time for Burning with me for FrontRowCenter:

Bill Jersey: “In 1965 an unusual event occurred in the history of documentary filmmaking. A film was made that criticized its funder. The Lutheran Church hired me to make a film for them on the church’s response to racial tension. The church fathers had hoped to show their organization responding effectively to the tension embroiling the country over this issue, but it was not turning out that way.

“A Time for Burning tells the story of a white Lutheran minister forced to resign over his commitment to Civil Rights as he attempted to integrate his all-white congregation in Omaha, Nebraska.

“One Omaha church member said of the potential African-American congregants: ‘I want God to bless them as much as he blesses me… I just can’t be in the same room with them.’ Another said, ‘I don’t see the problem… I had a Negro in my gym class.’ An African-American barber commented on the white churchgoers: ‘Your Jesus is contaminated–just like everything else you do!’

“I realized the film I was making was not what the Lutheran Church had in mind, so I offered them the chance to terminate my contract and the project. But the church bravely said: ‘Finish it and offer it for broadcast.’

“All three networks turned it down because–as an early example of the cinema vérité style–it had no host, no narrator and no identifying subtitles. But the film received rave reviews from TV critics and magazine and newspaper reviewers in every major city. Fred Friendly, then President of CBS News, said it was the finest Civil Rights’ film ever made.

“A Time for Burning subsequently received an Oscar nomination, was selected by the Smithsonian for its permanent collection and, in 2012, was blown up to 35mm from the original 16mm film by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.”Ω

Although it was filmed in 1965, A Time for Burning continues to resonate and spark heated discussion, given the racially divisive climate being ignited nationwide by POTUS. A featured selection of Film Forum’s “60’s VÉRITÉ Special Events” series, A Time for Burning begins screening at 6:20 p.m., followed by a Q&A with Bill Jersey, at Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, New York, NY 10014. –Judith Trojan

Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) at home in Greenwich Village with her ever-present typewriter, April 1959. Photo courtesy David Attie.

“We had her voice for as long as we really needed it, if we were wise enough to listen.”

Actress/activist Ruby Dee makes that startlingly prophetic statement (Dee died in June 2014) about her lifelong friend and colleague at the close of Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, a timely new American Masters profile celebrating the short but prolific life of writer/activist Lorraine Hansberry.

The two-hour documentary written and directed by Tracy Heather Strain and featuring the voice ofTony Award winner Anika Noni Rose as Hansberrylaunches Season 32 of American Masters on PBS tonight, Friday, January 19, 2018, at 9:00 p.m. ET/8:00 p.m. CT. Check local listings for air times and repeat broadcasts in your region and http://www.pbs.org/americanmasters for online viewing and additional resources immediately after its broadcast premiere.

The youngest child of a successful Chicago real estate broker and a school teacher, Lorraine Hansberry was driven to write and, with her writing, empower African-American, feminist, and lesbian communities to rise up against discrimination.

Her father, Carl Hansberry, a respected civic leader and supporter of the NAACP and Urban League, brokered housing for African-Americans migrating mid-century to Chicago from the South. But despite his respected niche in the community, Carl Hansberry couldn’t surmount the racism that threatened his own upwardly mobile family when they moved into a restricted white neighborhood.

Influenced by her father’s fight for racial harmony and justice, Lorraine Hansberry interacted with families in her dad’s housing projects and faced her own challenges with the ongoing racist verbal and physical threats that clouded the promise of a better day for her family and all African-Americans.

The lessons learned from her parents and their neighbors in Chicago’s African-American community would resurface on the page in Hansberry’s landmark play, A Raisin in the Sun, written when she was only 26. The story of a hard-working African-American family living in the projects on Chicago’s South Side, whose matriarch hopes to use her deceased husband’s life insurance payout to buy a new home for the family in a better Chicago suburb, A Raisin in the Sun was published and performed for the first time in 1959.

With the success of A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry became the first female African-American playwright to have her work performed on Broadway. The play went on to win the coveted New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award for Best American Play in 1959. But it’s made clear in Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart that the play’s evolution from page to stage was a tough mountain to climb.

The roadblocks facing Raisin’s predominantly all-black cast, its direction by an African-American (Lloyd Richards), its dicey out-of-town tryouts with white audiences, its struggle to secure funding and a house on Broadway, and its landmark opening night on March 11, 1959 are detailed at length in the film, as is the play’s transition onto movie screens in 1961.

Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Tracy Heather Strain richly illustrates Hansberry’s tumultuous life story with vintage photos and home movies, grainy clips from Hansberry’s TV interviews with the likes of David Susskind and Mike Wallace, and numerous clips from the black and white film version of A Raisin in the Sun (1961). Reminiscences from friends, family and colleagues, including actors from the original Raisin cast–Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Lou Gossett, Jr. and Glynn Turman–and director Lloyd Richards, as well as African-American singer/activist Harry Belafonte, playwright Lynn Nottage and scholars underscore the “firsts” sustaining Lorraine Hansberry’s remarkable legacy. Passages from Hansberry’s writings, voiced by Anika Noni Rose–Tony Award-nominated for her performance as Beneatha Younger in Broadway’s 2014 Raisin revival–thread gently throughout the film.

A scene from the first Broadway production of A RAISIN IN THE SON. From left: Ruby Dee (Ruth Younger); Lena Younger (Claudia McNeil); Glynn Turman (Travis Younger); Sidney Poitier (Walter Younger); and John Fielder (Karl Lindner). All except Turman reprised their roles in the 1961 film version.

The film’s title derives from Hansberry’s dictum that “one cannot live with sighted eyes and feeling heart and not know or react to the miseries which afflict the world.” Had she lived longer, Lorraine Hansberry would have been a powerful voice of change throughout the latter half of the 20th century and into the 21st. She no doubt would have been enraged by the degree of right-wing extremism, racism and sexism upending America today.

American Masters–Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart reminds us to revisit and embrace Hansberry’s work as we approach Black History month (February 2018). And going forward, the film will be an especially timely and evergreen program choice in African-American and women’s studies in schools, libraries and universities. It’s part of American Masters’ year-long #InspiringWomanPBS online campaign, which includes podcasts and a Web series now streaming on pbs.org/inspiringwoman, YouTube and Facebook where people can share stories of inspirational women in their own lives.

American Masters–Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart debutson PBS tonight, Friday, January 19, 2018, at 9:00 p.m. ET/8:00 p.m. CT. Check local listings for air times and repeat broadcasts in your region and http://www.pbs.org/americanmasters for online viewing and additional resources immediately after its broadcast.–Judith Trojan

In 1914, after suffering a stinging defeat two years before in the Presidential election of 1912, former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt gave up his dream to serve an unprecedented third term in office and focused his wanderlust on the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. It almost killed him.

The legendary Rough Rider, big game hunter and naturalist was determined to add “explorer” to his resumé when he set his sights on the River of Doubt, a mysterious and uncharted tributary of the Amazon River, where he hoped to map and collect exotic specimens. Teaming up with his 25-year-old son, Kermit, a handful of American friends and colleagues, like-minded Brazilians and indigenous natives, Roosevelt led the joint American/Brazilian expedition with renowned Brazilian explorer Colonel Cândido Mariano Da Silva Rondon. The plan to team up with Col. Rondon, who had indigenous roots and previous professional engagement in the region, would prove to be Roosevelt’s wisest decision.

Roosevelt was 55 in 1914– overweight, out of shape and no match for the remote, unforgiving Amazon River terrain and its exotic habitués. Overloaded with inefficient supplies and pack animals (110 mules and 70 oxen); incessantly under attack by ravenous insects and vampire bats; sickened by dysentery and malaria exacerbated by the excessive heat and humidity; diverted off course by unrelenting rapids and waterfalls; and unnerved by the lurking presence of piranha, anaconda, and potentially cannibalistic natives, the expedition was a hellish eight-week journey that quickly decimated the livestock and food supplies, incited madness and murder, and led Roosevelt to feverishly beg to be left in the jungle to die.

Into the Amazon, award-winning filmmaker John Maggio’s latest film for the PBS series, American Experience, opens a window onto Roosevelt’s tortuous Amazon expedition. The riveting two-hour documentary pairs fascinating vintage period footage and photos with reenactments shot on-location. The on-location footage illuminates the daunting scope of the twisty terrain that surrounded and nearly swallowed up Roosevelt and his team.

The film also features informative commentary from articulate historians, anthropologists, present-day explorers and Teddy Roosevelt’s great-grandson Tweed Roosevelt, as well as the voices of actors Alec Baldwin, Wagner Moura and Jack Lacy who read, respectively, from Teddy Roosevelt, Cândido Rondon and Kermit Roosevelt’s diary entries, letters and data reports documenting the expedition.

Into the Amazon premieres tonight, Tuesday, January 9, 2018, ushering in the 30th Anniversary season of the PBS series American Experience, at 9:00 p.m. ET/8:00 p.m. CT. Check local listings for air times and repeat broadcasts in your region, its availability on DVD and http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/ for online viewing immediately after its broadcast.

John Maggio, wrote, directed and produced AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: INTO THE AMAZON for PBS. Photo courtesy Ark Media.

Since I was especially fascinated by Ken Burns’ coverage of Teddy Roosevelt in his outstanding 2014 miniseries, The Roosevelts, (see my review @ September 14, 2014), I was anxious to connect with filmmaker John Maggio to discuss the dynamics and mindset that inspired and imploded Theodore Roosevelt’s dangerous sojourn in Brazil, as well as Maggio’s decision to revisit and film Roosevelt’s final chapter in close proximity to the site of the original expedition. My Q&A with John Maggio (conducted via email) is reprinted below.

Judith Trojan: You seem to be drawn to subjects who are, more often than not, mavericks within their culture or milieu…most recently Bonnie and Clyde, Ben Bradlee and now Teddy Roosevelt. What attracts you to subjects who, for better or worse, are drawn to lifestyles or choices that defy the norm?

John Maggio: I would include the sex researcher Alfred Kinsey and the inventor of the pre-frontal lobotomy, Walter Freeman, on that list. I find these types of individuals endlessly fascinating because they have chosen to push boundaries and almost always push a little too far because most have the fatal flaw that often comes with success – hubris – that ultimately becomes their undoing.

When I looked at Roosevelt, I discovered a man who had come to believe that the he could control nature – and sought a kind of personal mastery of nature. He was intrepid. A big game hunter, he collected thousands of specimens for the Natural History Museum and went on a year-long African safari in 1908. As a sickly child, he learned to test himself against nature as a way to live what he called ‘the strenuous life.’

So when he decided to go into the Amazon, he was quite certain he would be fine and could handle anything. But he really did meet his match there. The Amazon was still an untamed frontier; and, in 1914, when Roosevelt was traveling through it, the jungle practically ate him alive.

Trojan: Given TR’s other extraordinary personal and political accomplishments, adventures and challenges, why do you think the time is right to focus an entire two-hour film on his eight-week, near fatal 1914 adventure in the Brazilian Amazon?

Maggio: It’s just such a great yarn. I think everyone loves a good story. I can’t imagine any American President in recent history who would decide to throw themselves into such a perilous adventure upon leaving office, but Roosevelt is truly unique in that regard. I do hope that people come away with a sense that it is important to preserve the Amazon basin – we need the rainforest, and we need some places to remain wild.

Trojan: Why did you choose to incorporate live-action footage shot on-location in the Amazon rainforest? It must have been a logistical nightmare to film there. Most documentarians would have relied solely on less costly vintage footage and photos. Your beautifully shot, often aerial footage, works well to establish and sustain, respectively, the remote terrain and menace experienced by Roosevelt’s team…and reminds us of nature’s unforgiving brutality despite its enticing beauty. I admit to being reminded of Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo as I watched your film.

Maggio: Yes, we had our own Herzogian adventure shooting this film in the Brazilian Amazon. But after scouting various places to shoot, I quickly realized that there was no re-creating the Amazon rainforest. I wanted to capture just how vast the jungle is there and how small the expedition appears at the center of it. At times, they look like tiny ants making their way – and I think you feel how powerful and daunting the wilderness can be. So the only way to achieve that feeling was being there. We had to endure incredible heat and torrential downpours; and it was harrowing at times dragging very expensive camera equipment and a very large crew through that environment. It brought me closer to what TR and his team went through.

Trojan: How long did you film in Brazil, how close were you to the River of Doubt, and what were its similarities to the terrain in 1914? Your crew also included descendants of local indigenous people as well. Were any of them descendants of the native crew supporting Roosevelt’s expedition?

John Maggio (left) and crew filmed INTO THE AMAZON on-location in Brazil. Photo courtesy AMERICAN EXPERIENCE.

Maggio: We shot on a tributary of the Rio Negro about three hours up river from Manaus [Roosevelt’s safe harbor and destination]. Shooting on the Rio Roosevelt with the amount of crew and equipment was prohibitive because of access issues with the Cinta Larga tribe, the logistics of chartering flights in and out, and also there was no real base camp. The area around the Rio Roosevelt is still largely undeveloped and the challenges were too great to overcome.

That said, we found a remarkable location on the Ariau River which shared many of the same characteristics of the Rio Roosevelt – the water is black, it’s very serpentine and runs through the flooded forest. We were still very remote, but there was a base camp we could establish with generators for camera equipment and food.

We worked with about 20 locals to the area – many of whom were indigenous – who were invaluable to the success of the shoot. They expertly guided us through the rainforest, hand-carved six 16-foot dugout canoes we used in the shooting, acted as extras and animal wranglers, and provided us with food and local remedies for infections and scrapes. We spent a couple of weeks shooting in the Brazilian Amazon. Then we spent two weeks shooting overland, rapids and the gorge shots in the Dominican Republic.

Trojan: Where did you acquire the remarkable period footage and photos documenting Roosevelt’s expedition? Did TR’s great-grandson, Tweed Roosevelt, help guide your focus and contribute key source material, since he reportedly spent his 50th birthday in 1992 rafting the 1,000 mile Rio Roosevelt?

Filmmaker John Maggio (left) and crew members on-location during production of INTO THE AMAZON for PBS. Photo courtesy AMERICAN EXPERIENCE.

Maggio: Much of the footage of their journey comes from a film made for the Library of Congress which combines footage TR and his team took in 1914 (before they lost their film and equipment) with footage taken by another expedition headed by the explorer, George Dyott, in 1927. Dyott undertook the expedition down the River of Doubt to verify TR’s claims of discovery of the river. He took footage to prove it.

Also, at the Brazilian National Archives in Rio, we discovered some beautiful films of Cândido Rondon’s expeditions through the Amazon, and cut those in as well. In those Archives, we came across much of the footage photos of Indians he encountered. Tweed Roosevelt was a great resource because he had taken the trip most recently, so he helped us understand the physical experience.

Trojan: How long did this project take you to complete?

Maggio: It was about an 18-month production schedule.

Trojan: The film returns again and again to the impact on this journey of the Roosevelt father-son bond. It seems to me that this relationship is an especially relevant and timely aspect of the story, given the current administration’s father-son dynamic. How would you compare TR and Kermit’s relationship at the outset of the journey with their bond at river’s end? Do you see a lesson here in light of the ‘example’ being played out in D.C. today?

Theodore Roosevelt and his son, Kermit, hunted buffalo and other game while on African safari in 1908. Photo courtesy Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library.

Maggio: TR was always worried about Kermit. At first, it was because as a child Kermit seemed too timid. TR was always trying to toughen him up. But later, after their trip to Africa together in 1908, TR began to worry that maybe Kermit was taking too many risks; and he was.

Kermit was always in the shadow of his great intrepid father, and so he was always trying to push the envelope. He was building bridges in Brazil right before the River of Doubt expedition, which was very dangerous work; and he had already injured himself falling from a great height. In Africa, Kermit would stand in front of charging elephants and stare them down before shooting.

And on the River of Doubt expedition, his antics cost the life of one of the Brazilian paddlers. But in the end, he seemed to mature and, as you see in the film, he became his father’s keeper. He helped TR out of the jungle – and essentially saved his life. I can’t imagine there is any comparison to President Trump and his son, Don, Jr. I can’t imagine there would ever be a circumstance that would test these men in quite the same way. But you can’t help but see a similar dynamic at play – with Don Trump, Jr., wanting to impress his father.

Trojan: To your mind, is there a timely take-away or lesson to be learned from revisiting TR’s accomplishments and mindset driving this 104-year-old expedition?

Maggio: That nature is very powerful – despite all of our attempts to deny or ignore it. With global warming and the extreme weather events that come with it, I think it’s more important than ever to respect nature. That was a hard lesson for TR to learn and nearly cost him his life.

Trojan: Any subjects on your ‘wish list’ going forward?

Maggio: Think – George Orwell. Ω

Into the Amazon premieres tonight, Tuesday, January 9, 2018, ushering in the 30th Anniversary season of the PBS series American Experience, at 9:00 p.m. ET/8:00 p.m. CT. Check local listings for air times and repeat broadcasts in your region, its availability on DVD and http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/ for online viewing immediately after its broadcast.

You can read my review of John Maggio’s (American Experience: Bonnie & Clyde) in FrontRowCenter at judithtrojan.com/2016/01/19. And I encourage you not to miss his timely documentary profile of Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee, The Newspaperman: The Life and Times of Ben Bradlee, that debuted on HBO on December 4, 2017. (Check listings for additional HBO playdates in the weeks ahead and availability on HBO NOW, HBO GO and HBO On Demand.) I especially recommend watching the Bradlee documentary prior to catching Steven Spielberg’s critically acclaimed feature film, The Post, opening in theatres nationwide on January 12, 2018.–Judith Trojan

“There is a place for good fun that the whole family can watch.”– Carol Burnett.

If, like me, you’ve been held hostage this year by the psychodrama playing out in our nation’s Capitol and the devastation left behind by horrific hurricanes and home-grown terrorists, you can’t afford to miss The Carol Burnett 50th Anniversary Special. The two-hour laughfest,celebrating the golden anniversary of Carol Burnett’s iconic weekly variety series, premieres tonight, Sunday, December 3, 2017, 8:00 – 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS. After its debut, you can watch it at http://www.cbs.com/shows/carol-burnett-50th-anniversary-special/video/

National treasure and doyenne of family friendly entertainment, comedienne Carol Burnett has actually made our nation laugh… guilt and partisan free …for more than 50 years. Her personal trophy shelf is host to a boatload of Emmys, People’s Choice Awards and Golden Globes, as well as the Horatio Alger Award, Peabody and Ace Awards, a Kennedy Center honor, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. An endless stream of personal tributes and guest appearances continue to attest to her legacy in broadcast history as a pioneer of sketch comedy.

Although she has excelled on stage, film and TV, in both musical comedy and drama, her most unforgettable contribution to television and the entertainment industry as a whole is, of course, The Carol Burnett Show.

An hour-long comedy variety show, The Carol Burnett Show debuted on CBS on September 11, 1967, ran for 11 years, amassed 276 episodes, originated eight or nine individual comedy sketches per episode, averaged 30 million viewers per week and received 25 Emmy Awards. It was named by Time Magazine as one of the “100 Best Television Shows of All Time,” and continues to be a hit in reruns on MeTV and, in boxed sets, on DVD.

TV audiences first became acquainted with Carol Burnett as a wildly inventive cast member of The Gary Moore Show on CBS. Although the concept of a woman hosting and driving her own TV variety series was inconceivable at the time, her savvy agent somehow orchestrated a clause in her contract that gave her the opportunity to host her own variety show. When she decided to test the waters and request her own variety show, Ms. Burnett was initially shot down by skeptical CBS brass. But thanks to that ironclad contract, CBS had no choice but to acquiesce. A star was born, and The Carol Burnett Show became must-see TV for generations of viewers and a ratings bonanza for CBS.

“The Carol Burnett Show was a comedy showcase that was years ahead of its time,” recalls Leslie Moonves, CBS Chairman and CEO. “We are very proud of the show’s significant place in CBS’s legacy as well as in television history.”

It’s clear from the clips featured on The Carol Burnett 50th Anniversary Special that her comic and collaborative genius made shows like “Saturday Night Live” possible. SNL alums Bill Hader, Maya Rudolph, Martin Short and Amy Poehler join Jay Leno, Bernadette Peters, Steve Martin, Steve Lawrence, Stephen Colbert, Kristen Chenoweth and Jane Lynch to pay homage to Carol Burnett’s trailblazing show. Anecdotes from Ms. Burnett and original cast members Vicki Lawrence and Lyle Waggoner drive the conversation and introduce memorable characters and clips from the show.

Also featured is costume designer Bob Mackie, who was a pivotal player behind the scenes on The Carol Burnett Show. Starlet O’Hara, Nora Desmond, Mama, Eunice, Mrs. Wiggins and the rest of Carol, Vicki, Lyle, Tim Conway and Harvey Korman’s beloved characters found their footing (or lack of it) in Mackie’s brilliant costumes, some of which are now housed at The Smithsonian.

And if you’re searching for a holiday gift with Carol Burnett’s name on it, grab a copy of her most recent memoir and New York Times Best Seller In Such Good Company: Eleven Years of Laughter, Mayhem, and Fun in the Sandbox (Crown Archetype, June 2016). Now available in paperback and audio formats (Random House), the book details the collaborative process that gave birth to the comedy sketches that are as fresh and hilarious today as they were 40 or 50 years ago. —Judith Trojan

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before”… from TheRaven by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849).

All Hallows’ Eve will soon be upon us, so what better time to become reacquainted with Edgar Allan Poe…the 19th-century American writer, editor and book critic whose Gothic narrative poems, short stories and prescient detective protagonist C. Auguste Dupin (he preceded Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot!) still chill and thrill readers 168 years after Poe’s death on October 7, 1849.

It’s clear from filmmaker Eric Stange’s new documentary, Edgar Allan Poe: Buried Alive, that Poe’s work clearly reflected his lifelong struggles with personal loss and grief triggered by his father’s abandonment and his 24-year-old mother’s death when Poe was only two years old. Those early life-shattering experiences precipitated his separation from his two siblings and his introduction into an unyielding foster home.

The 90-minute documentary, Edgar Allan Poe: Buried Alive, narrated by actress Kathleen Turner and featuring dramatic reenactments by Tony-Award-winning actor Denis O’Hare as Poe, premieres tonight, Monday, October 30, 2017, on the PBS series American Masters, at 9:00 p.m. ET/8:00 p.m. CT. (Check local listings for air times and repeat broadcasts in your region and http://pbs.org/americanmasters and PBS OTT apps for streaming beginning on Halloween, Tuesday, October 31, 2017.)

Although the themes of death and dying permeate this profile–it opens and closes with the mysterious and still unresolved circumstances of Poe’s death in 1849–the film jumps beyond the deaths of Poe’s mother and her successors to link his conflicted career as a writer and editor and his subject matter to the stark realities of living and dying in 19th-century America.

The socio-economic landscape in pre-Civil War America was precarious at best. Poverty weakened resolve. Slaves were bought and sold within Poe’s Southern milieu. And the ravages of consumption (tuberculosis) and the collateral damage suffered by women and their newborns during childbirth fueled a burgeoning mortality rate that was so unrelenting that some unfortunates ran the risk of internment before they actually took their last breaths. To prevent victims from being buried alive, coffins were outfitted with gizmos that enabled the living “dead” to alert those above ground that a mistake had been made. It’s not much of a stretch to connect the dots to Poe’s eventual literary focus.

Writer/director Eric Stange paints his portrait of Poe with a broad stroke. Mr. Stange ably juxtaposes actor Denis O’Hare’s moody evocation of the poet with visuals of Poe’s distinctive handwritten letters and text; staged readings by actors Chris Sarandon and Ben Schnetzer; and factoids from a host of articulate Poe scholars, biographers, and filmmaker Roger Corman. The latter’s film adaptations of Poe’s work did much to breathe new life into actor Vincent Price’s career.

Edgar Allan Poe’s fifth generation cousin, Harry Lee Poe, who has made his own mark as a Poe family foundation helmer, museum trustee and an Award-winning Poe scholar in his own right, contributes fascinating bits of family lore as well. Edgar Allan Poe was saddled with his family’s predisposition to alcoholism; an orphan’s unresolved longing for a stable, loving family; and the final insult of a much ballyhooed obituary written and riddled with lies by his literary rival, Rufus W. Griswold. But, in death, Poe found sustained literary acclaim and a family tree to call his own (no doubt via his siblings’ offspring).

Edgar Allan Poe: Buried Alive premieres tonight, Monday, October 30, 2017, on the PBS series American Masters, at 9:00 p.m. ET/8:00 p.m. CT. (Check local listings for air times and repeat broadcasts in your region and http://pbs.org/americanmasters and PBS OTT apps for streaming beginning on Halloween, Tuesday, October 31, 2017.) As an introduction to the man behind the myth and mystery, the film will serve as an evergreen addition to American Literature classes and Halloween-themed programs, concurrent with the reading of Poe’s work, in high schools, colleges and libraries. Until then…Happy Halloween!–Judith Trojan